Chainmail: Rules for Medieval Miniatures (0e)

Chainmail is a fully fleshed out fantasy miniatures game that puts YOU in charge of your very own army. Whether you want to fight historical battles based in the trenches of reality or fantasy battles rife with magic and fantastic beasts, Chainmail gives you the rules to fight the wars you want to fight!

The Chainmail Medieval Miniatures section features rules for terrain, movement, formations, fatigue, and more. The Fantasy Supplement provides information for Dwarves, Goblins, Elves, magic, fantastic monsters, and other rules necessary for combat in a magical setting.

Note: This is a classic product, and not for use with the D&D Chainmail Miniatures skirmish game released October, 2001. "

Product History

"Chainmail" (1971), by Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren, is the medieval miniatures system that was the progenitor of D&D. It was published in March 1971.

About the Cover. Jon Peterson has traced the origins of the illustration on the cover of "Chainmail" (1971), which was penned by Don Lowry: it's a swipe of an interior picture from Jack Coggins' The Fighting Man (1966), an illustrated history of fighting forces. Gary Gygax drew his own version, which appeared in Domesday Book #5 (July 1970) and was marked "After Coggins", but that credit doesn't appear on Lowry's "Chainmail" cover.

Origins (I): A LGTSA of His Own. Gary Gygax's strong interest in wargaming began in 1967, when he helped to reform the International Federation of Wargamers (IFW). This wargaming organization was at the center of a vibrant fandom that communicated through numerous fanzines.

However the story of "Chainmail" truly begins when Gygax became intrigued by medieval miniatures wargames at Gen Con I (1968), thanks to a demo of Henry Bodenstedt’s “Siege of Bodenberg” (1967). He formed the Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association (LGTSA) in 1969 to support his new miniatures wargaming interest, where he was joined by Donald Kaye, Jeff Perren, Rob Kuntz, and others. It would in turn become the core of the Castle & Crusade Society, a medieval special interest group in the larger IFW.

Origins (II): The Perren Conventions. LGTSA member Jeff Perren had been involved with the wargaming scene even longer than Gygax and had an extensive collection of ancient and medieval miniatures — including some of the Elastolin 40mm miniatures preferred for use in “Siege of Bodenberg” (1967)! He was probably the biggest proponent of the middle ages among the LGTSA players, which led him to write a few pages of rules for medieval miniatures wargaming. Gygax developed Perren's rules and published the "Geneva Medieval Miniatures" in the Panzerfaust fanzine (April 1970), before expanding them for the Castle & Crusade Society's Domesday Book #5 (July 1970).

Origins (III): The Lowry Hobbies. Enter Don Lowry, another IFWer and owner of the mail-order store Lowrys Hobbies. Lowry's mail-order store mainly focused on selling miniatures; in order to improve the sales of those miniatures, he decided to start selling miniatures rules as well. He began with his own semi-professional variant of The Battle of the Bulge (1965) called "Operation: Greif" (1970) and followed that up by distributing the LGTSA's own Fast Rules (1970) for tanks.

Origins (IV): The Guiding Games. For Perren and Gygax's medieval miniatures rules to become "Chainmail" required a big change in Gary Gygax's life. In October 1970, he lost his job at the Fireman's Fund Insurance. Meanwhile, he'd met Lowry just a few months earlier at Gen Con III (1970). Put these factors together, and soon Gygax had become the editor of a new line of "Wargaming with Miniatures" games for Don Lowry's new gaming imprint, Guidon Games.

The line led off with a further expansion of the LGTSA Medieval Miniatures rules: a rulebook called "Chainmail" (1971). One of those expansions was a 14-page "fantasy supplement", which would prove pivotal to the future D&D game. That fantasy supplement may also explain why Gygax's first collaborator, Jeff Perren, didn't continue on. Gygax says that Perren was "not captivated by giants hurling boulders and dragons breathing fire and lightning bolts, [nor] did wizards with spells, heroes and superheroes with magic armor and swords prove compelling". So, Perren would not be part of the roleplaying games to come.

(Much of this early history of "Chainmail" is draw from Playing at the World, by Jon Peterson, a superb look at the industry's wargaming roots.)

Origins (V): Many Printings. Guidon published a second, more professional run of "Chainmail" (1972) around the same time it relocated to Maine. Unfortunately, this relocation caused Gygax's departure as editor and may have been a factor in the slow-down and eventual end of the Guidon Games line. By 1974, Gary Gygax was interested in reclaiming "Chainmail" because of its relation to D&D. He did so and a third edition (1975) would be published by TSR. It would stay in print throughout the '70s and into the '80s as D&D's precursor — and a crucial component of the OD&D (1975) rules.

Foreshadowing the D&D Rules: The Basics. The first twenty-some pages of "Chainmail" are what you would have expected to see in the amateur wargaming miniatures community of the '60s. They're "rules for medieval miniatures". Miniatures move and fight using a ratio of either 1:20 (one miniature representing 20 troops) or 1:10 (one miniature representing 10 troops), depending on the scale of the miniatures used. There are rules for melee, missiles, catapults, gunpowder, morale, and more. Some of the more advanced rules systems cover weather and sieges.

Foreshadowing the D&D Rules: Man to Man. The first of the innovations of "Chainmail" comes in its second major section, which covers "man-to-man combat". Here, "a single figure represents a single man". It was intended for use for "small battles and castle sieges" as well of jousting. This change from miniatures representing units to miniatures representing singular persons was the most important innovation for supporting roleplaying games rather than wargames.

Foreshadowing the D&D Rules: The Fantasy. However, D&D is really foreshadowed in the third major section of "Chainmail", the "fantasy supplement", which is meant to allow players to "refight the epic struggles related by J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, and other fantasy writers" (or to create their own battles).

Different levels for their different sorts of characters, which Gygax says was the basis for D&D's character advancement.Spells like cloudkill, fire ball, haste, lightning bolt, phantasmal force, and polymorph.Monsters like basilisks, dragons, ents (treants), trolls, wights, and wraiths.

A division of monsters into the categories of law, neutral, and chaos.

Future History. "Chainmail" would be crucial to the development of D&D, even acting as the default combat system for OD&D (1975). It would later be replaced by a new man-to-man combat system in "Supplement I: Greyhawk" (1975) and a new mass-combat system in "Swords & Spells" (1976).

Many years later, Wizards of the Coast would reuse the name for their Chainmail Miniatures Game (2001), a d20-based skirmish combat system.

About the Creators. Gygax would, of course, go on to co-create D&D. Together he and Perren would also coauthor Cavaliers and Roundheads (1973), which would be the first product from a small new company called Tactical Studies Rules (TSR).

About the Product Historian

The history of this product was researched and written by Shannon Appelcline, the editor-in-chief of RPGnet and the author of Designers & Dragons - a history of the roleplaying industry told one company at a time. Please feel free to mail corrections, comments, and additions to shannon.appelcline@gmail.com.

Quick question for those who purchased this - What is the quality of the scan?

Ronald BFebruary 01, 2017 5:43 am UTC

PURCHASER

Dear Andrew,
The scan quality is great. It has that original "wavy" words quality the original document had. Nothing was changed... GG's typos are still in the text!

Zach HJanuary 10, 2017 7:51 pm UTC

Nice history, Shannon, but one correction. The LBBs presented both the use of Chainmail and the alternate man-to-man system. The tables for the "Alternative Combat System" (an alternative to combat using Chainmail), first appeared in Men & Magic (Vol 1 of OD&D) rather than in Greyhawk. This is in regard to your mention that "a new man-to-man combat system in "Supplement I: Greyhawk" (1975)". Greyhawk expanded this system with variable weapon damage, but the alternative combat tables themselves were present in the original game.

Shannon AJanuary 10, 2017 10:19 pm UTC

PUBLISHER

Yep, you're right, my description is sloppy there. Thanks!

Nathan JJanuary 10, 2017 7:36 pm UTC

PURCHASER

Another good thing to add would be PDFs of the Outdoor Survival board game. Then all the OD&D material would be pretty well complete.

Jeffrey WJanuary 25, 2017 7:22 pm UTC

THIS. I just scored a copy of Outdoor Survival for this purpose. Since Avalon Hill is now a Hasbro brand, this should be do-able, should it not?

Stephen R Brandon BApril 26, 2017 5:11 pm UTC

PURCHASER

Great idea! I also purchased a copy of Outdoor Survival from Ebay a while back, and have made my own version in hexographer, but a really high quality PDF of the board would be great for OD&D fans!

GeoCentric DJanuary 10, 2017 1:48 pm UTC

PURCHASER

Awesome! I'll be snagging this one.
It would be great to see some others released like 'Don't Give Up The Ship' and 'Cavaliers & Roundheads'.

A classic if somewhat poorly organized and explained set of wargame rules, as well an an indespensible text for players of the Original Dungeons & Dragons (the 3-book 1970s boxed editions) and RPG history buffs. Well worth the low buy-in price. [...]

This is what started it all! This book began to open a new door, moving from traditional miniatures wargaming into the world of role-playing games. The rules are quirky and not entirely clear, but as an historical document, priceless. I recommend this [...]

I purchased this to back up the hardcopy that I bought in 1975.<br><br>
<b>LIKED</b>: Everything, it is classic and the forerunner of The One True Game.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br&gt [...]

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